Richard Jones

This doesn’t quite qualify as a brief encounter yet, as I have not met Richard Jones (http://www.softmachines.org/). However, we were supposed to meet on Monday at a project meeting in Edinburgh, which is part of the NanoBio-RAISE meeting. So, anticipating this eventual encounter, I am drawn to noting this as a coincidence entry, for the following reasons.

1. Richard Jones is based in the University of Sheffield, where my sister currently lives. She mentioned the other day that there is a big nanotech institute there and she was referring to Richard’s work.

2. Our meeting in Edinburgh was supposed to include Richard, though he could not make it. I think he will present at the next of these meetings.

3. I have been involved with work at the Royal College of Art these last months and one of its designers has created a project based upon ideas within Richard’s book ‘Soft Machines’. (http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/people/alumni/05-07/michael-burton/projects/project2/videos/video1)

Medical Sociology Online

“The newly launched Medical Sociology online (MSo) (formerly Medical Sociology News, MSN) will publish high quality articles in the broad area of medical sociology based on original research using qualitative and quantitative methods. Articles for peer-review should be up to 6000 words, and submissions will be refereed anonymously by at least two referees. We will also accept shorter articles or commentary pieces of up to 4000 words (non peer-reviewed) that should also follow the MSo Style Guidelines. Two editions of MSo a year will be published on the BSA website and be freely available to download as a PDF.”

http://www.britsoc.co.uk/publications/MSOnline.htm

Celebrity Culture conference

a flashback to 2005….

Suzanne Walker

http://www.suzannewalker.com.au

I recently chatted with Suzanne about an article she was writing for Vogue Australia about manufacturing talent. She is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne writing about  ‘appearance’ and ‘image’.

Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Technology (21-25 Jun, 2007, Glasgow)

[2007.04.24 update. I just put together a site for the conference]

PATT – 18
Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Technology
International Design & Technology Education Conference

Call for Papers

Teaching and Learning Technological Literacy in the Classroom

21 – 25 June 2007

Keynote speakers:
Don Idhe: Stony Brook University , New York
Douglas Kellner : University of California, Los Angeles
Richard Kahn: University of California, Los Angeles
Carl Mitcham: Colorado School of Mines
Andrew Feenberg: Simon Fraser University, Canada
Leonard Waks: Temple University, Philadelphia
Joseph Pitt: Virginia Tech,
Michael Peters: University of Illinois
Marc J de Vries: Technishe University of Eindhoven, The Netherlands
John Dakers: University of Glasgow, Scotland

Introduction

As conference director for the next international PATT conference to be held in Glasgow next year, I am delighted to be able to confirm that some of the greatest names in the philosophy and sociology of technology have agreed to take part in the conference. They have all (along with others who will attend the conference) recently been published in a book called “Defining Technological Literacy”. This title forms the basis of the conference theme. I will put more information on a web site devoted to the conference when I have it up and running. It will also be of interest to participants, particularly from overseas, that this conference takes place just prior to the CRIPT conference, which in turn, takes place just before the DATA conference. This makes it possible for delegates to attend all three conferences, or any combination, should they wish. (I know that several delegates did attend all three in 2003.

The conference

There is very little literature directly relating to education about the basic technological nature of the world that young people must negotiate nor about the kinds of technological obstacles that they are likely to encounter in that world. Their views of technology influence their ability to both use and relate to it. Many young people have a tendency to perceive technology in terms of its artefacts: computers, cars, televisions, toasters, pesticides, flu shots, solar cells, genetically engineered tomatoes and so on. Often they do not see technology in terms of the knowledge and processes that create these artefacts, nor are they aware of the various implications for society resulting from these technologies.

There is a tendency in the teaching of Technology education at school level, to present information about some pre-existing technologies in an instrumental form. Pupils are then expected to reconstitute this information in the form of concrete artefacts. We do not sufficiently engender in young people an abiding curiosity about how the technologically shaped world in which they live actually affects them.

Within the various rationales for Technology education from across the developed world, an abiding and recurring issue is evident: Technology education must engage with the development of informed attitudes about the impact that existing and emerging technologies will have upon their cultural development, as well as the potential and actual consequences these technologies will have upon the environment, both locally and globally. This is known variously as ‘Technological Literacy’ or ‘Technological Capability’.

The conference organising committee invites papers that address aspects of teaching and learning in technology education concerned with methods of teaching and learning technological literacy in the classroom. Papers addressing the conference theme are particularly welcome, but authors are invited to submit research papers addressing any topic relevant to technology education.

Delegates will come from a wide range of technology education stakeholders – philosophers of technology, teacher educators, teachers, researchers, post-graduate students, policy makers, curriculum developers, consultants, and members of the broader educational community.

All papers accepted for the conference will be double blind peer reviewed prior to the conference. All papers accepted for presentation will be published electronically and also in a conference book which will be available at the conference. Authors of selected papers will be invited to work their papers up into chapters for submission in a book, to be published by Sense Publishers in 2007, based upon the conference theme. The URL for the Technology Book Series is: http://www.sensepublishers.com/books/ites/ites.htm#ITES%20series%20info

The conference will have two parts. The first two days will be devoted to the Keynote speakers mentioned above who will talk to their chapters in the recently published book “Defining Technological Literacy: Towards an Epistemological Framework”, available at:
http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?searchby=searchby&Qk=dakers&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=submit

The second part, taking up in the last three days, will concentrate upon the delivery of the accepted conference papers. It is proposed to set up a web site for this conference which will continue to update conference data. Details will follow in the near future. The conference language will be English.

For further information about the conference please do not hesitate to contact the Conference Director, John Dakers at jdakers [AT] educ.gla.ac.uk

Please e-mail completed papers, which should be in the region of 2,500 – 3,000 words to John Dakers at the above no later than the 30th November 2006.

XXII WORLD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY (30Jul-5Aug, 2008, Seoul, Korea)

XXII WORLD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY

Main Theme: RETHINKING PHILOSOPHY TODAY

The World Congresses of Philosophy are organized every five years by the International Federation of Philosophical Societies in collaboration with one of its member societies, which assumes responsibility for the organization of the Congress.

The XXII World Congress of Philosophy will be held from July 30 through August 5 in Seoul under the auspieces of the Korean Philosophical Association. It has several aims, which are to be understood as complementary.

To call attention to the importance of philosophcial reflection on philosophy itself, especially critical reflection on the diverse forms taken by contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy.

To reflect on the tasks and functions of philosophy in the contemporary world, taking account of the contributions, expectations, and gaps in philosophical awareness that are associated with other disciplines such as the natural and humane sciences, with political, religious, social, economic, financial, technological, etc. activities, as well as with diverse cultures and traditions.

The first Congress to be held in Asia, the Seoul Congress presents a clear invitation to rethink the nature, roles, and responsibilities of philosophy and of philosophers in the age of globalization. It is committed to paying heed to the problems, conflicts, inequalities, and injustices connected with the development of a planetary civilization that is at once multiculural and techno-scientific.

The main theme of the Congress will be developed, according to the tradition of the World Congress, in the following four plenary sessions and five symposia.

PLENARY SESSIONS

1. Rethinking Moral, Social and Political Philosophy: Democracy, Justice and Global Responsibility

2. Rethinking Metaphysics and Aesthetics: Reality, Beauty and the Meaning of Life

3. Rethinking Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and Technology: Knowledge and Culture

4. Rethinking History of Philosophy and Comparative Philosophy: Traditions, Critique and Dialogue

SYMPOSIA

1. Conflict and Tolerance

2. Globalization and Cosmopolitanism

3. Bioethics, Environmental Ethics and Future Generations

4. Tradition, Modernity and Post-modernity: Eastern and Western Perspectives

5. Philosophy in Korea

SECTIONS FOR CONTRIBUTED PAPERS

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Arts
Ancient Philosophy
Applied Ethics
Approaches to Philosophy
Bioethics and Medical Ethics
Buddhist Philosophy
Business Ethics
Comparative Philosophy
Confucian Philosophy
Ethics
Human Rights
Images and Symbols
Logic and Philosophy of Logic
Medieval Philosophy
Metaphysics
Modern Philosophy
Ontology
Persons and Identity
Phenomenology
Philosophical Anthropology
Philosophical Hermeneutics
Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Communication and Information
Philosophy and Economics
Philosophy and Environment
Philosophy and Future Generations
Philosophy and Gender
Philosophy and Literature
Philosophy for Children
Philosophy in Africa: Contemporary Issues
Philosophy in Asia and the Pacific: Contemporary Issues
Philosophy in Europe: Contemporary Issues
Philosophy in Latin America: Contemporary Issues
Philosophy in North America: Contemporary Issues
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Culture
Philosophy of Education
Philosophy of History
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Mathematics
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Natural Sciences
Philosophy of Nature
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Social Sciences
Philosophy of Sport
Philosophy of Technology
Philosophy of Values
Social and Political Philosophy
Taoist Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
Theory of Knowledge
Time and Memory

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Submit both (a) two paper copies of approximately 6 pages (1800 words) typewritten and double-spaced, with 1.5cm margins on all sides of the text, accompanied by a 10-20 line abstract, and (b) an electronic version, either on disk or as an attachment to an e-mail message. Both should be addressed to the Korean Organizing Committee and should include an indication, prominently displayed, of the section for which the contributed paper is intended and of the language in which it has been written.

The International Program Committee reserves the right to accept or not accept papers on the basis of criteria of quality. Only papers of a philosophical nature will be considered for inclusion in the program.

IMPORTANT DATES

June 1, 2007 is the deadline for the receipt of contributed papers and for proposals for round-tables and poster sessions. Papers and proposals received after this deadline, but before January 1, 2008 may be accepted, if space is still available.

Send papers and proposals for round-table and poster sessions to the Korean Organizing Committee

XXII WORLD CONGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY WEBPAGE

www.wcp2008.or.kr <http://www.wcp2008.or.kr/>

REGISTRATION, ACCOMMODATION, AND BOOK EXHIBITION

Registration

* $175 for early registration prior to June 1, 2007
* $200 for registration prior to January 1, 2008
* $225 for registration after January 1, 2008
* $100 for accompanying person
* $80 for students

Accommodation and Flights: to be announced later

Book Exhibition: to be announced later

—
Jinho Kang
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Seoul National University
Associate Secretary General, Korean Organizing Committee
World Congress of Philosophy 2008

Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations (13-16 July, 2007)

After having been in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur in the last 6 months, the Asian bug is hard to resist (obviously, I don’t mean avian flu). This looks like a good event and I’m in the middle of reviewing another article for Theory, Culture & Society as I write this!

Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations
IIIS Tokyo University / Theory, Culture & Society 25th Anniversary Conference

http://www.u-mat.org/

Tokyo University Hongo Campus 13-16 July 2007

Abstract Submission Deadline : 31st March 2007

Conference Outline

Today media are increasingly ubiquitous: more and more people live in a world of Internet pop-ups and streaming television, mobile phone texting and video clips, MP3 players and pod-casting. The media mobility means greater connectivity via smart wireless environments in the office, the car and airport. It also offers greater possibilities for recording, storage and archiving of media content. This provides not just the potential for greater choice and flexibility in re-working content (tv programmes, movies, music, images, textual data), but also great surveillance (CCTV cameras, computer spyware, credit data checking and biometrics). The media, then, can no longer be considered to be a monolithic structure producing uniform media effects. Terminology such as ‘multi-media,’ and ‘new media,’ fail to adequately capture the proliferation of media forms. Indeed, as media become ubiquitous they become increasingly embedded in material objects and environments, bodies and clothing, zones of transmission and reception. Media pervade out bodies, cultures and societies.

These ubiquitous media constitute our consumer and brand environment. Their interfaces and codes pervade our bodies and our biology. They pervade our urban spaces. They are ubiquitous in art, religion and our use of language. Yet from another angle art and language are, and have immemorially been, media. Media are about the physical, algorithm and generative code; but they are also immaterial and metaphysical. Communication is about channels and hardware/software; but communication is also about communion and community. Media deal in images: that is in the material; but their idiom is also symbols and the transcendental.

To theorize about today’s world, we evidently need to theorize media. Yet to theorize media also means we need to focus on how technological media are used in everyday practices. Not least, we need to address the question of the relationship of media practices to politics. This opens up questions about the formation of informed publics, new social movements and media events, not just the alleged need to combat media terrorism, nationalism and crime. Suggesting further questions about the power and influence of transnational media, intellectual property rights and openness of access. Raising issues of generativity, creativity and critical intervention.

Asia – East Asia, South Asia, and increasingly crucial, the Middle East – are becoming sites for these processes. Global geopolitics has been restructured by the ‘rise’ of China and India and the turbulence of the Middle East. With concomitant transformations of the role of the West and Japan, this conference becomes also a question of ‘ubiquitous Asia.’ These transformations are producing new trans-Asian culture industries, social movements and activism. At stake are a set of transformations of Asian culture(s) itself – of language, and modes of cultural thought and being. We will seek to address these questions of media transformations and their relation to social and cultural processes in a number of plenary sessions, paper sessions, round tables and events.

Plenary Speakers

will include:

Rem Koolhaas (OMA Rotterdam)
Mark B. N. Hansen (University of Chicago)
Katherine Hayles (UCLA)
Ken Sakamura (Tokyo University)
Barbara Stafford (University of Chicago)
Friedrich Kittler (Humboldt University)
Akira Asada (Kyoto University)
Bernard Stiegler (Centre Georges-Pompidou)

About Theory, Culture & Society

http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals… (Sage Publication)
http://ntu.ac.uk/research/… (Nottingham Trent University)

About IIIS Tokyo University

http://www.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/

Journal of Electronic Publishing

Today, I rediscoverd this journal (Journal of Electronic Publishing), which I was reading a few years ago. I learned that it re-launched in 2006, which is good news indeed! It was instrumental to my writing on this subject in 2003, which led to the article  in Culture Machine.

Miah, A. (2003) (e)text: Error…404 Not Found!, or the Disappearance of History,
Culture Machine: The E-Issue, 5,  [Available from: http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j005/Articles/AMiah.htm]

Space Policy (10 Jan, 2007)

I had hoped to attend this session, given my recent encounters in this area. However, deadlines are a little hard to ignore just now. Still, here is the info, in case I forget.

SPACE POLICY

EVIDENCE SESSION

The Science and Technology Committee will hold its second evidence session in this inquiry on Wednesday 10 January 2007 when evidence will be heard from:

At 9.30am
Dr David Williams, Director General, British National Space Centre (BNSC);
Miss Paula Freedman, Director, DTI Space within BNSC; and
Dr Arwyn Davies, Director, Earth Observation at both BNSC and Natural Environment Research Council
At 10.30am
Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive, Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council;
Professor Richard Holdaway, Head of Science Programmes, Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils; and

Air Vice-Marshal Chris Moran OBE, Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Ministry of Defence
The session will take place in Committee Room 8.

For further information please call Ana Ferreira, on 020 7219 2793.
Previous press notices and publications are available on our website, http://www.parliament.uk/s&tcom/ <http://www.parliament.uk/s&amp;tcom/>

SEMINAR with STANZA (15 Jan, 2007, 4-5pm)

SEMINAR with STANZA

MONDAY 15 JANUARY, 4-5pm, Digital Studios Space, Ben Pimlott building, ground floor left. Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW

FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME

Stanza is AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow, GDS (2006-2009). He is a London-based artist, who specialises in net art, multimedia, and electronic sounds. The research he is undertaking as part of his AHRC Fellowship with GDS is around The Emergent City, an exploration of data within cities and how this can be represented visualized and interpreted. Data from security tracking, traffic data, and sensor data for environmental monitoring can all be interpreted as a medium to make process led artworks. The underlying theme or main research question is concerned with the organic emergence of the =93city=94. Cities clearly have a character, but do they have a ’soul’? If so, then what can be determined about the validity of the city experience in relation to its ‘character’, or ’soul’, or spirit’?

Stanza’s award winning online projects have been invited for exhibition in digital festivals around the world, and Stanza also travels extensively to present his net art, lecturing and giving performances of his audiovisual
interactions. His works explore artistic and technical opportunities to enable new aesthetic perspectives, experiences and perceptions within the context of architecture, data spaces and online environments.

He was a NESTA Dreamtime Fellow (2003-2005) and has received many Awards including the following, all peer reviewed and awarded by internaltional juries.

http://www.stanza.co.uk.

Other on-line artworks can be viewed at: other online artworks.

www.amorphoscapes.com
www.soundcities.com
www.thecentralcity.co.uk
www.genomixer.com
www.theemergentcity.com
www.soundtoys.net

Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka maria x] PhD Art and Computational Technologies  Goldsmiths Digital Studios www.cybertheater.org

The Hastings Center (6-7 December, 2006)

Project meeting where I spoke about the ethics of genetic testing and selecting for enhancement. This work develops ideas that have arisen from a number of recent projects, including the paper I wrote with Emma Rich and my Master degree dissertation in Medical Law. The title of this presentation was

‘Is Genetic Selection for Sport a Good idea?’

A link to the presentation powerpoint.

Centre for Olympic Studies and Research, Loughborough University (1 Dec, 2006)

Research seminar for the Center for Olympic Studies Research:

‘Human Enhancement Technologies and the Bio-Politico-Ethics of Sport’

Over the last 5 years, the world has encountered considerable developments in human enhancement technologies. Yet, beyond their techical successes and failures, stem-cells, genetics, nanotech, and information technologies have all featured in the everyday sociologies of the future that abound within media and scholarly texts. The world of sport has encountered a wide range of these applications and the positioning of sports medicine in relation to experimental medical technologies invites rich and complex speculations on the development of performance in elite sport. In this paper, I discuss the role of bio(ethics) in cultural studies and its bearing on the human enhancement debate by drawing on Zylinska (2005). Within the UK, the most recent instantiation of this debate is through the public inquiry into Human Enhancement Technologies in Sport (Science and Technology Select Committee, 2006), the first evidence session of which heard from former 100m Olympic chamption Linford Christie. I discuss the political positioning of sports insitutions in relation to these technologies and how they reflect a broader bio-politico-ethical stance against human enhancement (Garnier, 2006; WADA, 2006).  Moreover, I suggest that this positioning is broadly indicative of a fundamental tension within the world of medicine over its legitimate role, and the ends of a commercial model for  human modification. These circumstances limit the possibility of open debate about the relevance and merit of anti-doping programmes and weaken the credibility of sport’s judicial ethos, the latter of which is highlighted by responses from athletes to Linford Christie’s involvement with the public inquiry. Finally, I conclude that these characteristics of sport’s political economy inhibit nations from developing technoprogressive approaches to the human enhancement debate.

References

Garnier, A. (2006). An Open Letter to Those Promoting Medical Supervision of Doping. Lausanne, Switzerland, World Anti-Doping Agency.

Science and Technology Select Committee (2006, March 1). New Inquiry: Human Enhancement Technologies in Sport. Select Committee for Science and Technology, British Government.

World Anti-Doping Agency (2005). The Stockholm Declaration [on Gene Doping], World Anti-Doping Agency.

Zylinska, J. (2005). The Ethics of Cultural Studies. London, Continuum.

Uehiro Lectures (May-June, 2007)

Professor Peter Singer on Global Poverty
Tuesday May 29th, Tuesday June 5th and Tuesday June 12th 2007 at 4.30 pm in the Martin Wood lecture Theatre (Clarendon Lab, Parks Road opposite Keble.